David Gelb’s Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Jiro Ono wakes at 4am – the hour of death – to meditate on the death of his monster. The greatest reverence a man can show to his monster is to eat the monster raw.

Jiro Ono takes a bath and scrubs any vulgar or false odor from his body. In his mind he removes the bones from his skeleton and scrubs each one in milk. When he is profoundly pure he gets out of the bath and stands naked beside an open window. Children passing on their way to school say, “The Master is drying.”

Jiro Ono eats eight raw oysters for breakfast. All night he dreamed of them sleeping in the refrigerator in their salt brine. All night they dreamed of Jiro Ono’s tongue.

Jiro Ono flaps to the subway station on a pair of wooden wings and flippers. As he touches down before the terminal the angels kneel and kiss the ground.

Jiro Ono speaks to the tuna – god of the sea – and touches his forehead to Its forehead. He says, “Here I thought I was teaching you to be a tuna. But really you were teaching me to be a man.”

Yoshikazu Ono makes sushi for six hours. At the end of six hours he takes all the sushi he made and throws it away. Then he wakes and makes sushi for twelve hours.

Neither Jiro Ono nor Yoshikazu Ono were born of WOMAN. There are no women in this film. But if there were their portions would be smaller. The Onos were born like Venus, swaddled in sea kelp, suckled in sea foam.

Jiro Ono eats the monster raw. From the moment the monster died until the moment it touched his lips there were minimal changes. Perhaps six hours. Perhaps six minutes separates them from being THE SAME ANIMAL. It is safe to say the monster nearly lived inside Jiro Ono.

Jiro Ono takes the day’s earnings. If ten people ate sushi that day it is 300,000 yen. He constructs a paper boat with the head of a swan. He sails the boat back home. Then he burns the boat.